of ability who might have perished in that catastrophe, but will escape the next one, which I'll prevent--a man who has an intransigent mind and an unlimited ambition, and is in love with his own life ... the kind of man who is what we were when we started, you and I. You gave him up. I can't."
He closed his eyes for an instant, and the tightening movement of his mouth was a smile, a smile substituting for a moan of understanding, amusement and pain. He asked, his voice gravely gentle, "Do you think that you can still serve him--that kind of man--by running the railroad?"
"Yes."
"All right, Dagny. I won't try to stop you. So long as you still think that, nothing can stop you, or should. You will stop on the day when you'll discover that your work has been placed in the service, not of that man's life, but of his destruction."
"Francisco!" It was a cry of astonishment and despair. "You do understand it, you know what I mean by that kind of man, you see him, too!"
"Oh yes," he said simply, casually, looking at some point in space within the room, almost as if he were seeing a real person. He added, "Why should you be astonished? You said that we were of his kind once, you and I. We still are. But one of us has betrayed him."
"Yes," she said sternly, "one of us has. We cannot serve him by renunciation."
"We cannot serve him by making terms with his destroyers."
"I'm not making terms with them. They need me. They know it. It's my terms that I'll make them accept."
"By playing a game in which they gain benefits in exchange for harming you?"
"If I can keep Taggart Transcontinental in existence, it's the only benefit I want. What do I care if they make me pay ransoms? Let them have what they want. I'll have the railroad."
He smiled. "Do you think so? Do you think that their need of you is your protection? Do you think that you can give them what they want? No, you won't quit until you see, of your own sight and judgment, what it is that they really want. You know, Dagny, we were taught that some things belong to God and others to Caesar. Perhaps their God would permit it. But the man you say we're serving--he does not permit it. He permits no divided allegiance, no war between your mind and your body, no gulf between your values and your actions, no tributes to Caesar. He permits no Caesars."
"For twelve years," she said softly, "I would have thought it inconceivable that there might come a day when I would have to beg your forgiveness on my knees. Now I think it's possible. If I come to see that you're right, I will. But not until then."
"You will. But not on your knees."
He was looking at her, as if he were seeing her body as she stood before him, even though his eyes were directed at her face, and his glance told her what form of atonement and surrender he was seeing in the future. She saw the effort he made to look away, his hope that she had not seen his glance or understood it, his silent struggle, betrayed by the tension of a few muscles under the skin of his face--the face she knew so well.
"Until then, Dagny, remember that we're enemies. I didn't want to tell you this, but you're the first person who almost stepped into heaven and came back to earth. You've glimpsed too much, so you have to know this clearly. It's you that I'm fighting, not your brother James or Wesley Mouch. It's you that I have to defeat. I am out to end all the things that are most precious to you right now. While you'll struggle to save Taggart Transcontinental, I will be working to destroy it. Don't ever ask me for help or money. You know my reasons. Now you may hate me--as, from your stand, you should."
She raised her head a little, there was no perceptible change in her posture, it was no more than her awareness of her own body and of its meaning to him, but for the length of one sentence she stood as a woman, the suggestion of defiance coming only from the faintly stressed spacing of her words: "And what will it do to you?"
He looked at her, in full understanding, but neither admitting nor denying the confession she wanted to tear from him. "That is no one's concern but mine," he answered.
It was she who weakened, but realized, while saying it, that this was still more cruel: "I don't hate you. I've tried to, for years, but I never will, no matter what we do, either one of us."
"I know it," he said, his voice low, so that she did not hear the pain, but felt it within herself as if by direct reflection from him.
"Francisco!" she cried, in desperate defense of him against herself. "How can you do what you're doing?"
"By the grace of my love"--for you, said his eyes--"for the man," said his voice, "who did not perish in your catastrophe and who will never perish."
She stood silently still for a moment, as if in respectful acknowledgment. .
"I wish I could spare you what you're going to go through," he said, the gentleness of his voice saying: It's not me that you should pity. "But I can't. Every one of us has to travel that road by his own steps. But it's the same road."
"Where does it lead?"
He smiled, as if softly closing a door on the questions that he would not answer. "To Atlantis," he said.
"What?" she asked, startled.
"Don't you remember?--the lost city that only the spirits of heroes can enter."
The connection that struck her suddenly had been struggling in her mind since morning, like a dim anxiety she had had no time to identify. She had known it, but she had thought only of his own fate and his personal decision, she had thought of him as acting alone. Now she remembered a wider danger and sensed the vast, undefined shape of the enemy she was facing.
"You're one of them," she said slowly, "aren't you?"
"Of whom?"
"Was it you in Ken Danagger's office?"
He smiled. "No." But she noted that he did not ask what she meant.
"Is there--you would know it--is there actually a destroyer loose in the world?"
"Of course."
"Who is it?"
"You."
She shrugged; her face was growing hard. "The men who've quit, are they still alive or dead?"
"They're dead--as far as you're concerned. But there's to be a Second Renaissance in the world. I'll wait for it."
"No!" The sudden violence of her voice was in personal answer to him, to one of the two things he had wanted her to hear in his words. "No, don't wait for me!"
"I'll always wait for you, no matter what we do, either one of us."
The sound they heard was the turning of a key in the lock of the entrance door. The door opened and Hank Rearden came in.
He stopped briefly on the threshold, then walked slowly into the living room, his hand slipping the key into his pocket.
She knew that he had seen Francisco's face before he had seen hers. He glanced at her, but his eyes came back to Francisco, as if this were the only face he was now able to see.
It was at Francisco's face that she was afraid to look. The effort she made to pull her glance along the curve of a few steps felt as if she were pulling a weight beyond her power. Francisco had risen to his feet, as if in the unhurried, automatic manner of a d.'Anconia trained to the code of courtesy. There was nothing that Rearden could see in his face. But what she saw in it was worse than she had feared.
"What are you doing here?" asked Rearden, in the tone one would use to address a menial caught in a drawing room.
"I see that I have no right to ask you the same question," said Francisco. She knew what effort was required to achieve the clear, toneless quality of his voice. His eyes kept returning to Rearden's right hand, as if he were still seeing the key between his fingers.
"Then answer it," said Rearden.
"Hank, any questions you wish to ask should be asked of me," she said.
Rearden did not seem to see or hear her. "Answer it," he repeated.
"There is only one answer which you would have the right to demand," said Francisco, "so I will answer you that that is not the reason of my presence here."
"There is only one reason for your presence in the house of any woman," said Rearden. "And I mean, any woman--as far as you're concerned. Do you think that I believe it now, that confession of yours or anything you ever said to me?"
"I have given you grounds not to trust me, but none to include Miss Taggart."
"Don't tell me that you have no chance here, never had and never will. I know it. But that I should find you here on the first--"
"Hank, if you wish to accuse me--" she began, but Rearden whirled to her.
"God, no, Dagny, I don.'t! But you shouldn't be seen speaking to him. You shouldn't deal with him in any way. You don't know him. I do." He turned to Francisco. "What are you after? Are you hoping to include her among your kind of conquests or--"
"No!" It was an involuntary cry and it sounded futile, with its passionate sincerity offered--to be rejected--as its only proof.
"No? Then are you here on a matter of business? Are you setting a trap, as you did for me? What sort of double-cross are you preparing for her?"
"My purpose ... was not ... a matter of business."
"Then what was it?"
"If you still care to believe me, I can tell you only that it involved no ... betrayal of any kind."
"Do you think that you may still discuss betrayal, in my presence?"
"I will answer you some day. I cannot answer you now."
"You don't like to be reminded of it, do you? You've stayed away from me since, haven't you? You didn't expect to see me here? You didn't want to face me?" But he knew that Francisco was facing him as no one else did these days--he saw the eyes held straight to meet his, the features composed, without emotion, without defense or appeal, set to endure whatever was coming--he saw the open, unprotected look of courage--this was the face of the man he had loved, the man who had set him free of guilt--and he found himself fighting against the knowledge that this face still held him, above all else, above his month of impatience for the sight of Dagny. "Why don't you defend yourself, if you have nothing to hide? Why are you here? Why were you stunned to see me enter?"
"Hank, stop it!" Dagny's voice was a cry, and she drew back, knowing that violence was the most dangerous element to introduce into this .moment.
Both men turned to her. "Please let me be the one to answer," Francisco said quietly.
"I told you that I hoped I'd never see him again," said Rearden. "I'm sorry if it has to be here. It doesn't concern you, but there's something he must be paid for."
"If that is ... your purpose," Francisco said with effort, "haven't you ... achieved it already?"
"What's the matter?" Rearden's face was frozen, his lips barely moving, but his voice had the sound of a chuckle. "Is this your way of asking for mercy?"
The instant of silence was Francisco's strain to a greater effort. "Yes ... if you wish," he answered.
"Did you grant it when you held my future in your hands?"
"You are justified in anything you wish to think of me. But since it doesn't concern Miss Taggart ... would you now permit me to leave?"
"No! Do you want to evade it, like all those other cowards? Do you want to escape?"
"I will come anywhere you require any time you wish. But I would rather it were not in Miss Taggart's presence."
"Why not? I want it to be in her presence, since this is the one place you had no right to come. I have nothing left to protect from you, you've taken more than the looters can ever take, you've destroyed everything you've touched, but here is one thing you're not going to touch." He knew that the rigid absence of emotion in Francisco's face was the strongest evidence of emotion, the evidence of some abnormal effort at control--he knew that this was torture and that he, Rearden, was driven blindly by a feeling which resembled a torturer's enjoyment, except that he was now unable to tell whether he was torturing Francisco or himself. "You're worse than the looters, because you betray with full understanding of that which you're betraying. I don't know what form of corruption is your motive--but I want you to learn that there are things beyond your reach, beyond your aspiration or your malice."
"You have nothing ... to fear from me ... now."
"I want you to learn that you are not to think of her, not to look at her, not to approach her. Of all men, it's you who're not to appear in her presence." He knew that he was driven by a desperate anger at his own feeling for this man, that the feeling still lived, that it was this feeling which he had to outrage and destroy. "Whatever your motive, it's from any contact with you that she has to be protected."
"If I gave you my word--" He stopped.
Rearden chuckled. "I know what they mean, your words, your convictions, your friendship and your oath by the only woman you ever--" He stopped. They all knew what this meant, in the same instant that Rearden knew it.
He made a step toward Francisco; he asked, pointing at Dagny, his voice low and strangely unlike his own voice, as if it neither came from nor were addressed to a living person, "Is this the woman you love?"
Francisco closed his eyes.
"Don't ask him that!" The cry was Dagny's.
"Is this the woman you love?"
Francisco answered, looking at her, "Yes."
Rearden's hand rose, swept down and slapped Francisco's face.
The scream came from Dagny. When she could see again--after an instant that felt as if the blow had struck her own cheek--Francisco's hands were the first thing she saw. The heir of the d.'Anconias stood thrown back against a table, clasping the edge behind him, not to support himself, but to stop his own hands. She saw the rigid stillness of his body, a body that was pulled too straight but seemed broken, with the slight, unnatural angles of his waistline and shoulders, with his arms held stiff but slanted back--he stood as if the effort not to move were turning the force of his violence against himself, as if the motion he resisted were running through his muscles as a tearing pain. She saw his convulsed fingers struggling to grow fast to the table's edge, she wondered which would break first, the wood of the table or the bones of the man, and she knew that Rearden's life hung in the balance.
When her eyes moved up to Francisco's face, she saw no sign of struggle, only the skin of his temples pulled tight and the planes of his cheeks drawn inward, seeming faintly more hollow than usual. It made his face look naked, pure and young. She felt terror because she was seeing in his eyes the tears which were not there. His eyes were brilliant and dry. He was looking at Rearden, but it was not Rearden that he was seeing. He looked as if he were facing another presence in the room and as if his glance were saying: If this is what you demand of me, then even this is yours, yours to accept and mine to endure, there is no more than this in me to offer you, but let me be proud to know that I can offer so much. She saw--with a single artery beating under the skin of his throat, with a froth of pink in the corner of his mouth-the look of an enraptured dedication which was almost a smile, and she .knew that she was witnessing Francisco d'Anconia's greatest achievement. .
When she felt herself shaking and heard her own voice, it seemed to meet the last echo of her scream in the air of the room--and she realized how brief a moment had passed between. Her voice had the savage sound of rising to deliver a blow and it was crying to Rearden:
"--to protect me from him? Long before you ever--"
"Don.'t!" Francisco's head jerked to her, the brief snap of his voice held all of his unreleased violence, and she knew it was an order that had to be obeyed.
Motionless but for the slow curve of his head, Francisco turned to Rearden. She saw his hands leave the edge of the table and hang relaxed by his sides. It was Rearden that he was now seeing, and there was nothing in Francisco's face except the exhaustion of effort, but Rearden knew suddenly how much this man had loved him.
"Within the extent of your knowledge," Francisco said quietly, "you are right."
Neither expecting nor permitting an answer, he turned to leave. He bowed to Dagny, inclining his head in a manner that appeared as a simple gesture of leave-taking to Rearden, as a gesture of acceptance to her. Then he left.
Rearden stood looking after him, knowing--without context and with absolute certainty--that he would give his life for the power not to have committed the action he had committed.
When he turned to Dagny, his face looked drained, open and faintly attentive, as if he were not questioning her about the words she had cut off, but were waiting for them to come.
A shudder of pity ran through her body and ended in the movement of shaking her head: she did not know for which of the two men the pity was intended, but it made her unable to speak and she shook her head over and over again, as if trying desperately to negate some vast, impersonal suffering that had made them all its victims.
"If there's something that must be said, say it." His voice was toneless.
The sound she made was half-chuckle, half-moan-it was not a desire for vengeance, but a desperate sense of justice that drove the cutting bitterness of her voice, as she cried, consciously throwing the words at his face, "You wanted to know the name of that other man? The man I slept with? The man who had me first? It was Francisco d.3'Anconia!"
She saw the force of the blow by seeing his face swept blank. She knew that if justice was her purpose, she had achieved it--because this slap was worse than the one he had dealt.
She felt suddenly calm, knowing that her words had had to be said for the sake of all three of them. The despair of a helpless victim left her, she was not a victim any longer, she was one of the contestants, willing to bear the responsibility of action. She stood facing him, waiting for any answer he would choose to give her, feeling almost as if it were her turn to be subjected to violence.
She did not know what form of torture he was enduring, or what he saw being wrecked within him and kept himself the only one to see. There was no sign of pain to give her any warning; he looked as if he were just a man who stood still in the middle of a room, making his consciousness absorb a fact that it refused to absorb. Then she noticed that he did not change his posture, that even his hands hung by his sides with the fingers half-bent as they had been for a long time, it seemed to her that she could feel the heavy numbness of the blood stopping in his fingers--and this was the only clue to his suffering she was able to find, but it told her that that which he felt left him no power to feel anything else, not even the existence of his own body. She waited, her pity vanishing and becoming respect.